First of all, "Frantic" isn't. The title suggests, clearly, a frenetic,
pell-mell pace, but the film delivers a slow, careful buildup to a
moderately-paced climax. It's consistently interesting -- you keep
watching -- but it's not as exciting or suspenseful as the Alfred
Hitchcock thrillers that were obviously its model. Director Roman
Polanski has always been best at internal suspense, rather than
external, and the latter is what we have here. (Notice that in
"Chinatown," "Rosemary's Baby" and his other best films, what happens
is not as important as the characters' attitudes toward the events.)
Nonetheless, in its own quiet way, "Frantic" builds up a good deal of
tension by the time of its climax beside the Seine. This is one of the
few suspense movies that probably works better on home video than in
theaters.

Harrison Ford is excellent as American doctor Richard Walker, returning
to Paris with his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley) some twenty years after
their honeymoon there. He's attending a medical convention, and she's
along for a vacation. They're well-to-do, and are safely ensconced in a
luxurious hotel -- when Sondra simply vanishes while Richard is taking
a shower.

Some will think that at this point, Polanski and his long-time friend
and co-writer Ge'rard Brach (who appears in the film) make a
significant error. They show us each slow step Richard takes as he
tries all the official ways of seeking his missing wife; most of the
officials he talks to assume that she has gone off on a romantic
adventure. If you're expecting a fast-paced action thriller, as the
title might suggest, these scenes could make you justifiably impatient.
However, Polanski and Brach are trying to show us how this decent,
law-abiding man gradually loses patience with the "proper" way of doing
things, and how each patronizing smile increases his impatience and
anxiety. We don't become frantic -- but finally Richard Walker does.

However, there is one aspect of this wait-and-watch approach that can
drive you to distraction. There was a luggage mixup on the airline, and
Sondra had ended up with someone else's suitcase. We knew this; Richard
knew this. It takes him so long to realize the luggage mixup might have
something to do with Sondra's disappearance, and to rip the other
suitcase open and examine its contents that it's maddening. In a
Hitchcock film, we might have seen Richard taking all the proper steps
in a swift, ironic montage, returning to the room and the mysterious
suitcase within seven or eight minutes after Sondra disappeared.
Because that's really where the story starts.

And once it does, "Frantic" becomes far more entertaining, especially
with the arrival on scene of Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), the
leather-clad, night-life-loving young woman to whom the mysterious
suitcase belonged. She was smuggling in something, she didn't know
what, and clearly that's what the various factions are after. Richard
gets her at-first reluctant cooperation, and later she helps him
because she's both attracted to him and touched by his obvious deep
love for his wife. (There's never really a hint of a romance between
Richard and Michelle.) As they team up, not only does the pace of the
movie pick up, but it starts becoming surprisingly funny, and builds to
a nicely tragic climax, triggered by the greed that Michelle just
cannot shed.

Michelle is the most interesting creation in the film. Half-child,
half-woman, half-sophisticated, half-naive, she's drawn to Richard
because she has a warm heart, but it has a glaze of ice; several times
she gets them both into trouble by demanding the payment for smuggling
she feels she deserves. Polanski knows Parisian nightlife and those who
live it well, and it's clearly brought out in this amusing, touching
character. Seigner is also a promising actress, and very attractive as
well. She's since gone on to stardom, and a romance with Polanski.

The photography by Witold Sobocinski is mostly in pearly gray tones;
there doesn't seem to be a blue sky anywhere in the film, and the parts
of Paris we see are far removed from the usual tourist haunts. We see
very little of the standard tourist sights; the Opera is visible from
the Walker's hotel room, and at the end, the Eiffel Tower can be seen
in the background of a couple of shots. But that's because it's hard
not to include the Eiffel Tower in the background of scenes shot in
Paris. Replicas of the Statue of Liberty play important roles in the
story, symbolic of several things at once. There's also an emphasis on
the garbage trucks that putter around Paris in pre-dawn hours. (I don't
think I have seen any other film that has so many scenes set at dawn.)

One of the amusing touches early in the film is that Dr. Walker is
fairly well lost without his wife. She takes care of his appointments
and in general manages things for him. After she vanishes, he never
changes his clothes again, and keeps none of his appointments (granted,
he has more important things to worry about than a medical convention).
Walker is brave not because it's in his nature, but because his
devotion to his wife drives him to heroic actions. He has one goal
only, to get his wife back (we learn early on that she was indeed
kidnapped), and nothing else matters to him. Ford usually plays someone
who's after something, but never before had he seemed so single-minded.
He was in very much this same mode in "The Fugitive" a few years later.

But there is something lacking in "Frantic," a fault that's hard to pin
down. It's as if Polanski and Brach assembled a script from a kit,
rather than made a story they were devoted to; there's a lack of
personal involvement at all points. It's a respectable piece of work,
but it's as involving or exciting as intended; it's a good film, not
the outstanding thriller it might have been.

As with too many of the early DVD releases, the Warner disc of
"Frantic" lacks any extras at all, and is not letterboxed. I hope it
doesn't take Polanski's death for a respectable DVD collection of his
films to be released.